Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

OK, this one will only save a single click per addition of a tool, but with Alteryx's general awesomeness small annoyances become like a stone in the shoe.

 

Consider my highly complex workflow below ; having inspected the dataset I now realise that I don't want some of the fields in my dataset...

 

 

...so I drag a Select tool in to deselect the columns, but I can't remember what the dataset looks like and I can't see the data...

 

 

 

...so I click on the Input tab and there it is, I can deselect away !

 

 

It would be particularly useful with something like a Summarize tool where I like to see the data to decide which aggregation to use.

 

Thanks !

Access to only MD5 hashes via MD5_ASCII(String) and MD5_UNICODE(String) found under string functions is limiting.  Is there a way to access other hashing algorithms, ideally via the crypto algorithms from OpenSSL or the .NET framework? 

 

  - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.hashalgorithm(v=vs.110).aspx
  - https://wiki.openssl.org/index.php/Command_Line_Utilities#Signing_.2F_Digest 

 

Hashing functions are a very useful tool to have. There are many different types of hashes and each one has tradeoffs for different uses. This can range from error checking, privacy shielding, password protection, forensic analysis, message authentication (HMAC) and much more. See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/800685/which-cryptographic-hash-function-should-i-choose 

 

- For workflows with data containing existing hashes, being able to consistently create hashes from non-hashed data for comparison is useful.
- Hashes are also useful because they are the same outside the Alteryx environment. They can be used to confirm correct operation of a production system or a third party's external process.

 

Access to only MD5 hashes via MD5_ASCII(String) and MD5_UNICODE(String) found under string functions in the formula tool is a start, but quite limiting. 

 

Further, the ability to use non-cryptographic hashes and checksums would be useful, such as MurmurHash or CRC.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hash_functions

Having the implementation benefit from hardware acceleration (AES-NI / CUDA) would be a great plus for high volume applications. 

 

For reference, these are some hash algorithms that could be useful in workflows:

SHA-1

SHA-256

Whirlpool

xxHash

MurmurHash
SpookyHash
CityHash

Checksum
CRC-16
CRC-32
CRC-32 MPEG-2
CRC-64

BLAKE-256
BLAKE-512
BLAKE2s
BLAKE2b
ECOH
FSB
GOST
Grøstl
HAS-160
HAVAL
JH
MD2
MD4
MD6
RadioGatún
RIPEMD
RIPEMD-128
RIPEMD-160
RIPEMD-320
SHA-224
SHA-256
SHA-384
SHA-512
SHA-3 (originally known as Keccak)
Skein
Snefru
Spectral Hash
Streebog
SWIFFT
Tiger

Hi,

 

I spend too much time creating functions and supporting fields to help me aggregate based on dates.  I think that it would be very useful if the Summarize (US spellings....!!!) tool could be extended to include Date Aggregations that were naturally built in such as using a Date field to Group By Year, Month, Date.

 

I think that this would be a very easy update to the existing functionality and would be very useful as good time could be spent to provide all the usual date / time aggregations pre-made for users.

 

Kind regards,

Peter

Another seemingly minor one that would just make life a little easier and clean up workflows.  I often find myself renaming the Name/Value fields from a Transpose to be more descriptive.  Currently this requires a Select tool after each transpose, and it would be nice to put a couple of text boxes at the bottom of the transpose to rename Name/Value directly in the tool itself.

PLEASE add a count function to Formula/Multi-Row Formula/Multi-Field Formula!

 

I have searched for alternatives but am just confused about how to store the result for the total number of rows from Summarise or Count Records in a variable that can then be used within a Formula tab. It should not be that difficult to just add equivalents to R's nrow() and ncol().

It would be nice if we could change the tool numbers and effect which one gets done first. If I'm working on a module and I later add some more analysis upstream it won't get done or pulled first since it has a greater number. a simply ability to change the numbers would really make things a lot easier and it will allow the flow of work to flow smoothly visually

It was discovered that 'Select' transformation is not throwing warning messages for cases where data truncation is happening but relevant warning is being reflected from the 'Formula' transformation. I think it would be good if we can have a consistent logging of warnings/errors for all transformations (at least consistent across the ones based on same use cases - for e.g. when using Alteryx as an ETL tool, 'Select' and 'Formula' tool usage should be common place).

 

Without this in place, it becomes difficult to completely rely on Alteryx in terms of whether in a workflow which is moving/populating data from source to target truncation related errors/warnings would be highlighted in a consistent manner or not. This might lead to additional overhead of having some logic built in to capture such data issues which is again differing transformation by transformation - for e.g when data passes through 'Formula' tool there is no need for custom error/warning logging for truncation but when the same data passes through 'Select' transformation in the workflow it needs to be custom captured.

I'd like to see a tool that can take an input, then send it in different directions (similar to formula tool), but with many options... based on filters and/or formulas and/or fields.

 

Sometimes I need to perform actions on parts of my data or perform different actions depending on whether the data matches certain criteria and then re-union it later.

 

Right now, the filter tool only allows true or false. If we could customize further we could optimize our workflows rather than stringing filter tools together as if they are nested if/then.

So either the filter tool could have more options than true/false, and infinite ouputs, or the join multiple tool could be flipped, as shown below.

 

I envision something that says:

Split workflow:

• By Field: Field Name (perhaps with summarize functions such as min/max, etc.)
• By Formula (same configuration as current)
• By Filter
  • Field
  • Operator
  • Variable

 

Hello All,

Can you add the flexibility to access fields based on its position or index like a[1], a[2],... a[n]. a[1] being the first column. Also an option to get max[a] can give the last column and min[a] give the first column. In this way, we can easily subset the dataset. Most cases, we are handling survey data which has 1000s of columns and when we need to select certain columns, we have to manually select the column checkbox and its painful to select 100s of columns. It will be nice if there is an option to select based on ID or index. It will also be useful while doing multi-field formula with more number of fields, because currently there is no option to write formulaes based on field Name column in it. 

Regards,
Jeeva.

It would be great if Alteryx could introduce a tool implementing a Decision Model Notation (DMN)-style Decision Table as an option to remove business logic from a workflow.

 

Arbitrary business rules are frequently implemented against datasets in Alteryx workflows before actual processing occurs. The implementation of complex business logic frequently results in a spider web of join, filter, formula, and union tools. 

Improve Help Documentation or in-tool options for handling null values in statistical tools like Weighted Average or Linear Regression. For instance, checkbox to remove null value records, or at least warn users.

 

In the processing of learning to perform linear regression in RStudio and Alteryx, I came across differing outputs depending on how null values were addressed. Take the Weighted Average tool for example.

 

In R, the weighted.mean function treats null values in the variable of interest as if they were not there. If the user does not specify that null values exist, the result is NA. If any null values exist in the weight field, the result is NA.

 

Since I am more familiar with Alteryx, I originally did the data preparation—including calculating the weighted means—in Alteryx. When comparing these weighted means with those generated in R, I found that Alteryx treats the null values as zeros (i.e. includes them in the calculation). The user would have to know this is incorrect and first filter out the null values. See screenshot examples.

 

 

 

This is also the case within the Linear Regression tool. If null values are not omitted prior to regression, the results are wildly different. Perhaps this is known by more experienced users/statisticians, but this incorrect usage would have gone on unbeknownst to be had I not cross-checked with RStudio.

 

Weighted Average in AlteryxWeighted Mean in R

I usually have some checks of my workflows. The simplest are row counts at varying points. I use Count Records tools, rename the outputs using a Select tool, Union them, and use a Message tool to calculate and show Deltas. I want to have the ability to control the output field name of the Count Records tool the same way I can control the output field name of a Record ID tool.

Would it be possible to add some additional options to the running total, in particular average (max, st dev. may be useful) to the running sum tool or create a rolling average tool where you can group by multiple fields and have a rolling window for the last x rows, which you select?  I know this can be done in the Multi-Row formula and with the moving summarise tool tool (http://www.chaosreignswithin.com/2014/12/moving-summarize.html), however the former is capped by 10,000 rows and alteryx crashes on my mac when trying to click on the multi-row formul tool with 6000 rows.  Also it takes a several hours to analyse 1 file, and would like to have a solution to do this on a daily basis. Also I need to be able to so a rolling average over the last 11,999 rows, as this would be the last 20 minutes of data using a 10Hz GPS unit. This would be a great tool I think.

 

 

Disabled Containers throw errors if it contains any interface tools. It should not throw any error as the user is intentionally disabling the container.  

 

Reduce mouse movement required by bringing up the "Add" menu at the point of the cursor when right-clicking on a field in the Fields window.

Idea:

Some well known scoring methods use optimal binned variables for added robustness. Let's add this capability to Alteryx.

 

Retionale:

Here's a basic link on why to do that; http://documents.software.dell.com/statistics/textbook/optimal-binning

 

Current status in Alterys as I'm aware of:

Tile tool or Multi-field Binning tool for completing same task as Tile tool on multiple fields, splits the variables by 5 methods;

• Equal Records or Intervals or Sums

• Smart Tile

• Unique Value 

• Manual

Unfortunately "equal something" binnings are bad idea, as the values are categorized "blindly" irrespective of the effects on the predictive power of the models. 

 

What to do:

What's needed is to bin both numerical and categorical variables optimally such that the Weights of Evidences (WoE) should present a monotone increasing or decreasing pattern. Maybe at most a V or U shaped "convex" structure.

 

Quick win:

Without constraining ourselves with monotonicity or convex cases, the easiest practice would be running a C4.5 or CHAID tree algorithm (produces multiple splits rather than binary splits in CART) for a single variable and select the target as the dependent variable and all the resulting nodes will be the bins we are looking for. Doing this for multiple variables at once is the key to the tool to be generated.

 

Clients:

This capability is sought by risk management departments building robust, stable Basel compliant models in financial industry, especially by banks.

It would be great if Alteryx developed an option to keep data transformations and additions already ran through the module. After adding new tools to the module, then the module would keep all of the data already transformed or added up to that point and would only spend time running the data through any new tools added after that point.

It would save the analyst a lot of time when developing big and complex modules.

Hi,

This feature isn't a must - but would definitely be a nice to have.

Similar to the excel having a tab with key figures like average, count and sum 

It would be a really good idea to do something similar within Alteryx just to have a quick glance on key figures/functions (example attached - apologise for the bad paint job but definitely would look good with Alteryx colour scheme)


Thanks

When CrossTab is used, string data in fields is converted to field names.  If the data in the data field has a hyphen in it, this is automatically converted to an underscore when it becomes a field name. 

 

Hyphens are legal in field names, so can we make CrossTab tolerate the string as is without changing it?  If that is a breaking change, could a checkbox be added that allows users to get CrossTab to try to use the text as is and exception if the string is illegal as a field name?

 

Hyphens are required in the field name when using the Download tool, as some header names like "Content-Type" have hyphens in them.